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Faced with a rise in dengue in Cuba, health authorities are again placing the weight of the fight against the Aedes aegypti mosquito on households. Across several provinces, Hygiene and Epidemiology specialists, People’s Power representatives and members of the Union of Young Communists are running neighborhood and school briefings, repeating that in-home source reduction is the key measure before fumigation. Those calls coexist with uncollected garbage, overflowing cesspools and sewage running down the streets, problems the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) itself admits as “limitations” of sanitation whose solution depends above all on the state.
What the official message says
On September 25, on the television program Buenos Días, Deputy Health Minister Carilda Peña García attributed the growth of the mosquito population to heat, rain and humidity, and added “avoidable and controllable” factors tied to conditions inside and around homes. In that same appearance, speaking about diarrheal diseases and hepatitis, she admitted that the country faces “limitations in environmental sanitation systems, water treatment and waste collection.”
The message is repeated in the provinces. In Las Tunas, a vector-control technical chief explained that 80% of the campaign’s effectiveness depends on the state’s system of work and that “the other 20% depends on in-home source reduction.”
Uncollected garbage and fumigation that depends on fuel
Provincial officials have acknowledged that the lack of fuel limits both garbage collection and fumigation. In Ciego de Ávila, an epidemiology deputy director admitted to the state Cuban News Agency that the fuel deficit limits how often waste is collected, though he blamed the micro-dumps on the population’s “social indiscipline.” In Sancti Spíritus, a hygiene and epidemiology official explained that fumigation is carried out in blocks with mosquito foci or febrile cases, “according to the availability of fuel and pesticide in each territory.”
The mountains of garbage, like the one that surrounds a crumbling building on Belascoaín Street in Central Havana, hold cans, bottles, tires and containers that trap rainwater, exactly the kind of vessel where Aedes aegypti breeds. Those foci, out in the street, are beyond the reach of in-home source reduction.
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Sewage: thousands of cesspools overflowing
On December 16, 2024, before a National Assembly commission, the head of the state water and sanitation group reported that the country had more than 11,000 overflowing cesspools pending cleanup. Months later, in April 2025, official figures from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources showed that more than 173,000 people in Cuba lack adequate systems to dispose of wastewater and excreta, and that 61% of the population depends on septic tanks and latrines. Stagnant sewage is a known risk for diarrheal diseases and hepatitis, which the MINSAP itself acknowledges are rising, and the puddles offer still more breeding sites for the mosquito. In Santiago de Cuba, residents have reported dirty tap water and an outbreak of diarrhea.
Dengue in Cuba: the figures the MINSAP will not update
Cuba does not publish up-to-date official data: the Pan American Health Organization only has official figures from the island through the end of June. Using its own models, the Global Dengue Observatory at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine estimates 11,235 dengue cases in Cuba so far in 2026, about 9.2 times more than in an average year. September, with an estimated 4,102 cases, was the worst month of the year so far, and October is usually the peak transmission month on the island.
The precedent weighs heavily: the 2025 chikungunya and dengue epidemic left at least 44 officially acknowledged deaths, a figure the deputy minister gave on December 8 of that year. Days earlier, authorities had admitted that 21 of the first 33 dead were minors.
What authorities ask amid the fever
Health authorities insist that anyone with a fever or other symptoms of dengue or chikungunya see a doctor for timely care. What is confirmed so far: the authorities acknowledge a lack of fuel for garbage collection and fumigation, reported more than 11,000 cesspools pending cleanup at the end of 2024, and admit a rise in communicable diseases. Even so, their public campaign against dengue in Cuba remains focused on source reduction inside the home.
Read this story in Spanish: Dengue en Cuba: el régimen pone el foco en los hogares mientras la basura y las aguas albañales siguen en la calle.
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